


Hatred

by agentx13 (rebelle_elle)



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-21
Updated: 2013-08-21
Packaged: 2017-12-24 05:46:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/936110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebelle_elle/pseuds/agentx13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve is sent on a training mission with Agent 13, only to find that the two of them weren't sent merely to test Steve's skills after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Steve glanced over his shoulder. There was only one agent there, but the agent’s hostility told him not to try anything funny. 

“What?” she demanded.

“Nothing.” Steve quickly turned his head forward and wondered again what he had done to deserve Agent 13’s wrath. She wouldn’t even tell him her name. He had only ever asked what he should all her once, and truth be told, he had come away from it more than a little cowed. 

He didn’t bother trying to say more. He had tried to make small talk when they had first enterred the wilderness reserve, had pointed out that he didn’t need a training mission since he already knew how to survive in the wilderness and had proven he was in shape, but Fury had given strict orders. Technically, Fury was his boss now, though Steve didn’t feel comfortable about that. He got the impression that for every secret Fury revealed, there were thousands more buried deeper, that he only gave away a couple secrets to keep some people from digging.

After three more hours of hiking, he came to a mountain ridge and stopped. Behind him, he was aware of Agent 13 stopping nearby instead of continuing on. He wondered what that said. If he didn’t know better, he’d say that Fury had assigned her to him to keep an eye on him. But there was no way Fury would waste manpow- womanpower?- an agent’s time like that.

Right?

He took out a map and studied it a moment before once again looking over the terrain.

“Problem?”

As surprised as he was to hear her voice, or to feel her move to his side, he didn’t show it, merely pointed at the outpost in the distance and turned the map so she could see. “There’s nothing on the maps about any buildings.”

“Because there aren’t supposed to be any.” Her voice was grim, and she tugged a pair of binoculars out of her bag. She focused them on the building, and he watched her instead of the buildings, still trying to place why she seemed so familiar. The blonde hair was plain enough. The jaw, the nose... The eyes- few people had glared at him quite so much, so he was sure he would have remembered those if he’d seen them before. No, she seemed nondescript enough, but pretty- not that he’d noticed. But of course she was pretty. He would never imply that she wasn’t, least of all because he was a little scared of what she might do if he ever implied otherwise.

She lifted her eyes, caught his, and wordlessly handed the binoculars over.

He pressed the binoculars to his face a little too quickly, giving the buildings all his attention. He hadn’t been staring at her while she’d been working. He had just been... looking. Right. It had nothing to do with how she seemed familiar somehow, or that he couldn’t figure her out, or that, on some level, she terrified him.

As his mind settled on the matter at hand, though, his concern about the agent beside him evaporated. “That... almost looked like a flash of a uniform under that person’s shirt.” And it reminded him of one he’d seen before.

There was no way. The universe might be cruel enough to take away Bucky. It had been the War, and plenty of people were taken away. But nothing on this Earth or beyond it would ever be cruel enough to let Bucky die for nothing.

Agent 13 didn’t seem to understand the significance, taking the lead on the path. “We’ll get closer and scout around. Fury must have suspected they were here.”

He fell into step behind her, glad that she was there to take point when he was so confused. “Then why didn’t he do something about it?”

She looked over her shoulder at him impatiently. “He did.”

After ten more steps, it finally occurred to him what she meant. “He expects me to take down an entire HYDRA base?”

“No.” Her tone implied he was slow in the head; at the moment, he wasn’t sure she was wrong. “He expects _us_ to take down an entire HYDRA base. _If_ that’s what it is. The training mission must have been a smokescreen for this.”

“Why couldn’t he just come out and tell us?”

She shrugged, her face turning back in the direction of the HYDRA base. Her profile struck him as familiar all over again. “My guess? He couldn’t. Bureaucracy. Or it’s another test. It’s Nick Fury. Take your pick.”

“And you trust this guy?”

“With my life.” She didn’t look at him as she said it, but her tone was enough. He didn’t say another word for the next five miles.


	2. Chapter 2

As they crept nearer the camp, they slowed. Steve kept his eyes on the ground and in the trees, looking for traps and guards. Agent 13 saw things he didn’t, though, and twice had to pull him back and point out security cameras. Abashed, he murmured that he hadn’t had those back in his day, and instead of smiling or nodding in understanding, she’d lectured him on security cameras, heat sensors, motion detectors, and the best places and ways for disguising each one. As much as it made him feel like an idiot, he couldn’t pretend it didn’t help. He spotted the next three cameras on his own. 

That night, they found a small precipice near the buildings, and the two of them made themselves comfortable for the night. Steve took the first shift, making notes in a small notepad of what happened in the buildings below. He sketched the perimeter the guards followed, made maps of the different structures, and jotted down times for patrols. After four hours, he woke Agent 13, briefly explained the notes, and then settled down to sleep himself. The two of them repeated the process throughout the rest of the day and throughout the next night.

An hour before dawn, Agent 13 gently shook Steve awake. “It’s time.”

Steve got up, confused and then relieved to see that most of their camp had already been cleaned up. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. Agent 13 was a capable agent, one of several women who held their own against men. Not that women were any less capable than men, of course. During the War, many of them had stepped up to do men’s work, and he respected Peggy, Natasha, and Agent Hill just as much as he did the Commandos.

Within ten minutes, he’d had a light breakfast, packed his things away, and joined Agent 13 as she studied the encampment below. They watched a guard yawn, and together hid their bags, keeping only their weapons. That done, Steve followed her quickly down a narrow path between the rocks. At the bottom of the small hill, they were due to separate, but Steve reached out and gently grabbed her arm. “Sure you don’t want to stay up at camp?”

She batted his hand off her arm. If the expression in her eyes were anything to go by, he was a couple syllables away from having a grenade shoved down his throat. “I’m an agent of SHIELD, Rogers. I’m not going to sit out on the action just because it might be dangerous.” She smiled, a fierce twist of the lips, and he quickly forced his eyes up to hers. No smile there. “Though if you think things are getting too hot for you around here, you’re welcome to sit it out. I can handle it.”

“There are over thirty men down there.”

“And it hardly seems like I’m giving them a sporting chance.” She didn’t give him anymore time to argue before she disappeared into the foliage.


	3. Chapter 3

He had always hated the waiting. In the War, he had known people who said the real battle had been waiting for the fighting. Some had used the quiet to prepare for the task ahead, but many found that the quiet gave them too much time to think about all the mistakes that could be made, all the bullets whose paths couldn’t be predicted, all the friends who hadn’t survived past battles and the shrinking likelihood that they themselves would see the end of the War.

Steve wanted to be better than that. He had always been determined in a fight, but though he had lost men before, it wasn’t until he had lost Bucky that he understood how it felt to be helpless when he was needed most. And now he kept thinking of the plan, of Agent 13 on her own, in enemy territory. Would he even know if something happened to her? How was he supposed to help her if he didn’t even know she was in trouble?

He took a deep breath and concentrated on the sounds coming from the camp. The camp was coming alive; he could hear pots and pans banging around as they set about making breakfast. Every nerve and muscle shouted at him to move, but he forced himself not to look and risk getting spotted. The plan had been to attack before the people in the buildings woke up. Where was Agent 13?

The explosion finally came, sending pieces of wood and metal flying into the brush around him. Steve lifted his shield over his head and ran toward the perimeter. Agent 13 had theorized that they had some sort of electrical barrier but had assured him she would take it out with the explosions. There were two more explosions as he ran, pulling back the shield and throwing it at three of the men. It was with no small amount of trepidation that he jumped over where they thought the barrier was, but nothing electrocuted him and he caught his shield again without trouble.

He had heard some say that fighting in battle became a blur, but, possibly because of the serum, Steve never saw it that way. He could always recall how he got from one point to another and the face of each person he had to hit to get there. The one with the machine gun and the thick brown beard, graying at its roots, Steve threw against a wall. The one after that, thin as a stick and wearing an Ole Miss Rebels shirt, Steve hit with the machine gun the bearded man had dropped.

Bucky had told him once that fighting was like a dance. You learned the moves, you got on the dance floor, and you showed your partner a good time until they had to sit - or lie - down. Steve had never thought fighting was that graceful, nor that harsh. But then, Steve had never liked fighting the way Bucky had. Steve saw fighting as something that had to be done, a means to an end, a last resort to stop something worse. There was nothing graceful about hitting the two boys who couldn’t have been older than nineteen, stupid kids making stupid decisions.

He slowed when he found five men on the ground, all of them unconscious. He did a mental tally. They had started with thirty men. Steve had taken out seven, Agent 13 had left these five. That left them eighteen men, all of whom would be growing angry at their friends’ treatment, possibly desperate if they thought more than two people were attacking.

He heard gunshots from around the corner of a building and ran toward them, just in time to see Agent 13 lunge inside the building, leaving four men on the ground behind her. Fourteen left. He hoisted his shield on one arm and moved into what was evidently the men’s barracks, his arm and his jaw both going slack at what he saw.

Part of him had supposed that Agent 13 must be like Agent Hill, able to fight in a pinch but mostly kept in some sort of desk or control position. The way she was fighting, though, made him realize she was every bit a field agent as Natasha. She didn’t fight with Natasha’s graceful efficiency; her hits and kicks weren’t done with flourishes, but they were just as brutal. She knew where to hit, and she got her enemies down and moved on with an unwavering determination he couldn’t help but admire.

A bullet pinged off his shield, and he instantly lifted it up and joined the fray, counting down in his head and he and Agent 13 continued through the barracks. Fighting with her was different from fighting with the Commandos, even from fighting with the Avengers. Like them, she had his back, jumping behind him whenever someone tried to shoot him in the back, but unlike them, she moved around him with a fluidity that spoke to having fought with people before. At first, he was careful how he used his shield, but he quickly realized that she would move around if she had to and fought as he usually did. Soon, they were the only two standing, and he slid his shield back on his arm.

“There are still two left.” He gave her a once-over. Some of her hair had come loose from her ponytail, and there were a couple smudges of dirt on her uniform, but she hadn’t been hurt.

She nodded to the uniforms strewn around the room. “Not HYDRA. Whoever this is, they’re new. But it doesn’t take much to spot a cult.” She pulled her knife out of one of the men, wiped it off, and placed it back in its sheath. “The last two might be going to warn whoever’s in charge. We need to stop them before they get the word out.”

Steve was already on his way out the door. He had been so certain - no, scared - that they were dealing with HYDRA, that Bucky had died for nothing. And now that he knew this wasn’t HYDRA, it didn’t change anything. With all the weapons that were piled up, with the uniforms and the security, and Colonel Fury sending them here, he was sure these people meant to hurt others. He had no intention of letting anyone else suffer what he had after he’d lost Bucky.

Only two buildings were still standing. For a moment, he wondered if perhaps one of the agent’s bombs had taken out the two men, but the more important thing at the moment was to search the two buildings. If they weren’t there, he would sift through the debris. Digging through the rubble now would take valuable time that they didn’t have.

He spotted movement between the buildings and ran for it, ignoring Agent 13 yelling for him to stop. Hadn’t she been the one to say they had to find the two and stop him?

He ran into the building and, just as expected, found one of the two men there calling for back-up on a cell phone. With his shield, the two of them remained standing for only a couple seconds. He pocketed their cell phones and carried them outside, nearly dropping them when he saw a hooded man holding a dazed Agent 13 by her ponytail, about to slam her head against a wall.

Time seemed to slow as Steve tossed the two men to the ground. He could see Agent 13 fumbling for her knife. He didn’t think. He didn’t have to. His grip on his shield was sure, his aim true, and when he was next able to breathe, the hooded man had jumped away from Agent 13, his arm at an angle, and the agent was already twisting to kick him in the sternum.

Steve caught the shield as it came back to him. “You all right, agent?”

She brushed some hair out of her face. “I had that.”

The confidence reminded him of someone else, but at the same time, it was all hers. He found himself grinning. “Had to get my hits in somehow, ma’am.”


	4. Epilogue

Agent 13 hadn’t seemed to think taking down a domestic terrorist outpost was important enough to call SHIELD, but now that they’d taken out the base, she pulled out a small radio from her utility belt. Within fifteen minutes, SHIELD agents were crawling over the base.

“Almost like they were watching,” she murmured to him as prisoners were carted away left and right.

Steve couldn’t disagree. He found it even more difficult to disagree when he saw Fury striding toward them. “Sir.”

Fury nodded to each of them. “Captain. Agent. Report.”

While Agent 13 filled him in, Steve watched the terrorists being taken away. Thirty men, thirty-one including their ringleader, who was currently being strapped to a gurney. His eye fell on the man’s coat sleeve. He was too angry to name what he saw there.

“Swastika,” Fury said for him. “New boy, rising through the ranks of the big bads since last October. Calls himself Hatemonger.”

“He’s a charmer,” Agent 13 said, one hand on her knife hilt. “So how come you sent us after him instead of, I don’t know, the FBI? Or a SHIELD team?”

“Couldn’t get clearance.” Like Agent 13, Fury kept his eyes firmly on the people getting carted away. For most of them, this would be their last chance to escape, and he didn’t want any of them getting away, nor hurting any of his agents in some misguided escape attempt. “We picked up chatter among other terrorist cells that this guy was gaining momentum, but until we caught him doing something wrong, our hands were tied. Government didn’t want SHIELD wasting time or money taking him on. We could have picked him up on a trespassing charge...”

“But it looked better if they got caught trying to kill a SHIELD agent and Captain America,” she finished.

He flashed her a smile. “You would have looked more harmless if you hadn’t set explosives around the property.”

She smiled back. Like his, it only lasted a moment. “I don’t do harmless.” She looked at Steve and followed his eyes to Hatemonger. “He’s not part of a rising political group, Rogers. He’s just one of the dregs.”

Steve roused himself from his thoughts, but other than turning his eyes toward her, didn’t move.“Does he even know what that symbol means?”

“He knows it means pain. He probably likes it. But that doesn’t mean he or his kind will last forever.” She gently shoved his arm. “We did good work today. He has ties to domestic terrorists all over the world, and he kept files on them. Once we crack the code, SHIELD can track them down and stop them before they kill anyone. Focus on that.” Her expression changed, and Steve stared after her as she walked toward some of the other agents, wondering if that had, in fact, been a smile. Had Agent 13 just smiled at him?

One of the other agents, a man easily over six feet tall, lifted a hand in greeting. “Agent Carter! Long time, no see!”

Agent 13 stopped in her tracks. Steve stared at her. She turned, saw him looking, and quickly started walking again.

“Agent Carter?” he echoed. The familiarity. The jaw. The way she hit people. He suddenly felt like an idiot for not having seen it before.

“Agent Sharon Carter. I think you know her aunt, Peggy Carter.” Fury sounded disinterested, but there was an undertone of amusement. “She threatened to beat anyone senseless who told you. Something about how you should have called her aunt after you woke up and you’ve put it off and she didn’t want to put up with you?”

“Peggy wouldn’t want to see-”

“Apparently, Agent 13 feels differently.” Fury watched Agent 13 - Sharon Carter - walk toward the unfortunate agent who had revealed her last name. “You have to understand, Captain. She’s... protective of her aunt.” He grimaced. “I’d better go protect my agent.”

Steve hung back uncertainly. Peggy had to be in her nineties now. Why would she want to hear from him?

He watched Sharon Carter, a woman every bit as tough as her aunt. And possibly scarier. And complicated. And an agent he had quickly come to respect.

If she thought Peggy wanted to hear from him, then he’d better stop making excuses and give Peggy a call.

First, though, he’d help Fury protect the agent who had let Sharon’s secret out.


End file.
